[SOLVED] segmentation fault in shared-mime-types - Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I just did a kernel + gfx driver upgrade on our Beowulf cluster (Running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server), hostname=sunray.

However, apt-get upgrade choked (with nothing less than a segmentation fault) when I tried to update the package ‘shared-mine-types’. Even a gdb backtrace wasn’t helpful at all.

I could replicate the seg/fault by trying to update the mime database:

sudo update-mime-database -V /usr/share/mime

The workaround I found was pretty easy (though also ugly). The problem is a conflict with an early version of libxml2 and libxml2-dev. The workaround is to do this (pull never versions from Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick)):

sudo -s

apt-get update

apt-get purge  shared-mime-info

cd /root/

wget https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-security/+archive/ppa/+build/3103171/+files/libxml2-dev_2.7.7.dfsg-4ubuntu0.3_amd64.deb

wget https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-security/+archive/ppa/+build/3103171/+files/libxml2_2.7.7.dfsg-4ubuntu0.3_amd64.deb

dpkg -i libxml2-dev_2.7.7.dfsg-4ubuntu0.3_amd64.deb

dpkg -i libxml2_2.7.7.dfsg-4ubuntu0.3_amd64.deb

apt-get install shared-mime-info

Now you should be able to do:

apt-get upgrade

^_^

The specs of the Ubuntu is 10.04.4 LTS (Lucid) with a custom compilation of gdm-2.20 from Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).

Happy apt-get upgrade‘ing!